Things Get In The Way

In the 1800s, the French psychologist Guilaume Duchenne wanted to study smiling. He discovered that an authentic smile is not only made with the lips but also with the eyes. In an authentic smile, the muscles around our eyes also contract and the muscles in our cheeks rise. Go ahead and try it. That fake smile that we sometimes adopt if we have to pose for a photo we don’t want to have taken, or when we think we must smile to fulfil a social function, only manifests in our lips.

Give yourself a moment to think about how many times a day you feel like you have to force a smile. Almost every time you do, it likely costs you a little withdraw from your wellbeing account. You likely feel less happy.

Now, pause and think about a single moment in your life when you were truly happy. Allow yourself to be present in that memory, really experience it again, truly savour it… 

If you’re smiling at the memory you’ll notice the muscles in your cheeks and eyes tightening. You’ll also likely feel a wave of genuine happiness. In fact, this authentic, Duchenne smile does not just signal you are happy, it actually spreads happiness to others. 

So if we want to increase the frequency of our Duchenne smiles we should take a look at some of the things that get in the way. 

Decision Fatigue  

We often think that the more choices we have for any given thing the happier we’ll be. Our brains tell us the being able to choose between multiple variations and options will allow us to find the perfect thing we’re looking for. We also live in an economy that bombards us with decisions and choices to make. How many times have you spent more time scrolling through Netflix than actually watching a show on Netflix? The decisions get harder with the more choices we are presented with because each choice requires us to use multiple filters.

Put simply, the more decisions we have to make the more our brains get tired. And the more tired our brains get, the worse our decision making capacity becomes. It makes sense when you think about it. We have to make so many decisions every day, some small and some significant. And though the choices vary wildly, it's the same brain, your brain, having to filter all that information before committing to a decision. Making too many decisions too frequently is exhausting. Decision making is one of the most expensive wellness withdrawals we can make. And we make decisions every day, and have to live with the consequences.

Barack Obama famously ensured his presidential wardrobe was limited to pretty much the same suit colour. 

In 2014, Obama told Vanity Fair magazine, “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits, I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

Obama simplified one aspect of his life, allowing him more energy to devote to the things that really mattered most.

Stephen Covey designed a useful tool to help reduce decision fatigue.

Without a strategy for managing decisions we end up wildly swinging at them the moment they enter our space. This means we end up living permanently in Quad I. As a result we end up living in a constant state of crisis. If you’re constantly fire fighting at some point you’ll burn out. 

Covey argued that the ambition should be to reduce the number of decision you have to make in Quad I so you can treat those issue with your fullest energy. To do that we need to spend more time in Quad II, which is where we plan and design. If you are engaging in this positive change project, you are right now operating in Quad II. Strategic planning helps us to recognise the difference between Quad I’s crisis decisions and Quad III’s demands and interruptions. If we can better differentiate between crisis and demands we can better distribute our energies to the decisions that really matter most. Now which quad do you think Obama’s suits fit into…

If you said Quad IV, congratulations you’re right. Agonising over the colour of a suit might be genuinely important to some people, but in most cases these are exactly the sort of unimportant, not urgent decisions we want to eliminate. 

Write a list of all the decisions you have to make from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. 

Go over your list and mark down the importance of each decision on a scale of 1-5 where 5 equals highly important and 1 equals low important.

Now, organise your list into the four the quads from the Covey model above. 

Do you see any decisions that you can simplify?

Emotional Contagion  

Human beings are social creatures. We need the company and support of others to thrive. But human beings are also emotional creatures, and it is quite normal for us to adopt the stresses and anxieties of someone we care about. 

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who is sharing something painful only to find yourself also feeling the same way?

This is empathy in action, and empathy is incredibly important for humans to express. Empathy helps us to understand others different to us and to grow our capacity for kindness and action. 

However, if we spend all day filling our cup with the stress, anxiety and pain of everyone we meet we’ll be so exhausted that we won’t be able to effectively support them or best look after ourselves. This process is called emotional contagion. 

Should we inoculate ourselves against this emotional contagion? It would be a pretty awful world to live in if we shut ourselves off from empathy. Instead, we need to realise that we don’t always have to experience the stress, anxiety or pain of someone in order to help support them. According to Paul Bloom, we should oftentimes be using compassion for others instead of empathy. Bloom argues that compassion is understanding someone else’s pain whereas empathy is feeling someone else’s pain. Bloom suggests we underuse compassion and therefore by overusing empathy we’re hastening our own burn out.

So when you find yourself supporting another person, it's ok to check in with you. If you find yourself absorbing someone else’s pain without the capacity to process it, if you find yourself overwhelmed, or triggered, remind yourself that you can give this person all the support they need through compassion. 

Being mindful of how you feel when you empathise will lessen the affects of the contagion. Applying other emotional support tools will not only allow you to support someone but will also help you support yourself. After all, we want a healthy sustainable you. We don’t need any more martyrs.

Self Esteem Versus Self Intimacy  

We often find ourselves seeking the praise of others. Indeed, external validation is powerful and it feels good when we receive it. However, when we place so much of our self esteem on the opinions of others it always leaves us vulnerable to harsh criticism. As such, we can find ourselves craving praise even when we know we haven’t earned it.

We need to make sure our self esteem is based in reality. Faking reality is not a path to good mental health. 

Judging your worth only on the praise or criticism you receive is likely to make you feel desperate and needy. Grinding through everyday will exhaust your reserves, not build them. 

Perhaps it's useful to think in these terms instead: self esteem is how you feel about how others see you. Self intimacy is how you build a relationship with yourself.

In this formulation we can still enjoy praise when it's earned and be open to criticism when it's valid. And we can also start to treat ourselves the way we would treat someone we love. 

‘Espoused’ Theories Versus ‘In Use’ Theories  

‘In use’ theories are the habits and routines that you intentionally do to positively influence your behaviour. ‘Espoused’ theories are the things you know you should do, perhaps say you do do, maybe you even think that you do do, but actually don’t or rarely do. 

Take this opportunity to think about just one habit or routine you know will give you a happiness boost but you struggle to actually do regularly. 

Situational Support

We can also help overcome these obstacles through situation support.

Situation support allows us to create healthy behaviours by using visual aids, messages to self, post it notes and notifications on your phone. By making these nudges and reminders visible we allow ourselves to remember them without having to hold everything in our heads at the same time. For example, you could set a weekly reminder on your phone that reads…

“Hey buddy, don’t forget to meditate today. You know it makes you feel better.”

Equally, making some things less visible is also helpful. Put things you don't want to interrupt you out of sight. Studies have shown that just having your phone on the table next to you whilst you work can make you up to 25% less engaged. Even when we’re not using our phone, just seeing it there reminds us that we could be using it, which means we have to work harder to ignore the phone’s siren song and give our full concentration to the task at hand.

Creating a social network is another great way to generate situational support. Ask your friends, surround yourself with people who like to do these things and you’ll have buddies to work with making the process more enjoyable. 

Take a moment now to create one situational support mechanism. You can create as many as you want to, of course. But right now, let’s at least commit to one.